[WikiEN-l] In development--BLP task force

[wjhonson at aol.com]

What you're really saying is, "Isn't there a way to be nice even to 
people who aren't nice?".
If the only verifiable information on a BLP is negative, then that is 
what the article should contain.
We shouldn't add unverifiable information simply for balance.  That 
sort of action would be untrue to our principles and policies.

"Starting over" won't change that.




-----Original Message-----
From: Emily Monroe <bluecaliocean at me.com>
To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Thu, Aug 6, 2009 4:52 pm
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] In development--BLP task force










> We're encyclopediasts and sometimes you have to say that Hitler was
> bad.

I agree.

But what if the only verifiable information in the article is the
negative stuff, in spite of having other, less widely-reported
information available? If I had ran across that as a new page
patroller, I'd probably tag it as an attack page if it was severe
enough, but what about less severe, and/or older pages? Do we delete
and start over, or do we merely add the positive information?

Hitler is an extreme example. Everybody in the mainstream knows Hitler
was bad. We just state why.

Emily
On Aug 6, 2009, at 12:38 AM, WJhonson at aol.com wrote:

> Of course, and that's why we have other rules which moderate the other
> rules.  And the BLP policy itself is a rule.  However if a piece of
> evidence is both verifiable, and widely reported and yet negative
> about
> a person, and that person vociferously objects to it's inclusion...
> than what?  That is the problem here.  We should not white-wash a
> piece
> of negative, verifiable, widely reported bit simply because it might
> affect a person, or even if they claim it does or has.  We're not the
> nicey-nice patrol and shouldn't be forced to become it.  We're
> encyclopediasts and sometimes you have to say that Hitler was bad.
>
> Will Johnson
>
> <<Not everything which is verifiable should be included in
> Wikipedia.>>
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ken Arromdee <arromdee at rahul.net>
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> Sent: Wed, Aug 5, 2009 10:30 pm
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] In development--BLP task force
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, 5 Aug 2009 wjhonson at aol.com wrote:
>> The language of the board resolution doesn't come down hard enough on
>> the side of verifiable information.  That is, if something is
>> verifiable, even a direct quote from the subject themself, then that
>> information should be allowed to be included, and should not be
>> forcibly stopped from inclusion by aggressive article
>> patrollers-with-tools.  It seems to me that the way the language is
>> worded, the board is going to continue to allow harassment of those
>> editors conscientious to the evidence, at the expense of verifiable
>> evidence already broadcast widely across the net.
>
> I think that this is exactly why we need people working on BLP.
> Wikipedia
> has put so much emphasis on rules such as verifiability that some
> people think
> that the rules trump everything else.  Worse yet, the system is set up
> so that
> the rules *do* trump everything else; in a conflict between someone
> with a rule
> and someone who's trying to use judgment, the rule always wins,
> because
> you can always argue with someone's personal judgment, but the rule's
> right there in print.
>
> BLP is sort of a hack to the system which says "we're going to force
> you to
> ignore the rules in this particular situation, because they *really*
> don't
> work".  It by no means covers every situation where the rules cause
> problems,
> but it's better than nothing and right now it's all we've got.
>
> Not everything which is verifiable should be included in Wikipedia.
>
>
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